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       Monthly Newsletter
                                                                                 Mar. 29, 2007

Why Portrait from Photo Become Less Expensive Now?
        Edited by Sunshine Promising, Inc.   Best Arts from China
                       Putian City of Fujian Province, P.R.C.

Portrait from photo, is always a hot topic among all galleries, both overseas and
domestic, since such service brings people happiness, reminding previous happy time
with their family members, relatives or intimate friends; or even their dear pets,
landscape; sweet memories of their important events such as wedding ceremony, award
winning; to name a few.
What a valuable service! No wonder it attracts so many galleries and artists to devote
themselves. However, portraits need higher level of painting skills, thus in each medium-
sized city, only no more than 100 painters are qualified for portrait painting.

A few years ago, portraits painters were a hit since their scarcity. Pricing of portrait tops
paintings of all quality standards. Suddenly, in recent 2-3 years, its pricing decreases at
unexpected rate, at the same time, lots of portraits painters seem coming out from
nowhere. Does it mean its skill is no longer a secret, and easy to master now?
NO. The answer is PRINT. You may wonder, I did receive oil portrait. Yes, but the print
is underneath and you can’t look through it. No wonder the degree of resemblance is
even better. The rate of rejection is even lower than 100% hand-made ones.
God seems to award those less skillful painters with latest technology to earn more
money with quicker speed. Unfair, isn’t it?

The truth is, a layer of print is firstly printed onto canvas and the second layer is painted
onto. Then some maybe 3rd layer. But time and labor are substantially reduced due to
omission of first layer, furthermore, the time and labour spent on the second layer is
much less, and finally, since the rejection rate is low, painters spend less time on
correcting the final portraits. All the bad feelings, including impatience, frustration,
overpaid labor, no longer obsess painters. What a relief!

Is the latest technology application wrong? Or we’re so stubborn to stick to 100% hand-
making?

The result is, end-customers may not be happy to get easy come, easy go work! After 2
years, the first layer and the second one become not sticking together so well, and trace
of print will be found somehow, by comparing to the 100% hand-made ones, making it
not nice-looking any more and you have to decide to take it off from your important
place. Or, customers may feel being cheated from the first moment of knowing the truth,
with their expectation of 100% hand-made portraits, but ending up a printed plus painted
one. They would rather go to a photo shop to print it anyway, why bother to make it a
hand-painted portrait?

Suppose, if some customers are not against such application of print, as long as final
effect looks the same as 100% hand-made one, and as long as it is cheaper. As a gift
presented to others, they don’t care how long it will last. Two years, pretty enough.
So we need to inform all customers the difference with different pricing before they order
portrait, making the service process transparent, thus all customers get what they want,
by paying higher price for higher quality, lower price for quasi-hand-made paintings.
Then it becomes fair once again! Rule comes back.

Who are gonna be the pioneer to tell our “Source of Profit” – customers the truth?
I am, in China, while, who is the first buyer overseas, to tell the truth?

Written by
James Jianyin LIU
Sunshine Promising, Inc.
www. SunshinePromising.com
Best Arts Provider

                       Monthly Newsletter
                                                                                 Jun. 18, 2007

  The 100% hand-made counts, not print
Edited by Sunshine Promising, Inc.   Your Best Arts Partner from China
                                     Putian City of Fujian Province, P.R.C.

Recently we spend so much time in emphasizing 100% hand-making to both galleries
overseas and all of our painters to hand make all high quality paintings because if you
are professional arts dealer and focus on oil painting business, looking forward to
sustaining your biz into 10 years later, and get your continuous investment return, then
you have to think about whether your promise of 100% hand-making to customers is
true or not and how long the paintings you sold will be kept, meanwhile, we need to
educate our painters since we care about them and we expect them to have longer
artistic life, and make more profit for themselves, needless to say, ourselves also. The
following 3 points elaborate.

First, we all need to worry, tangibly, can a printed plus painted painting stand for more
than 3 years? Suppose, your customers are not all living in mid-east desert weather,
dried for all 4 seasons, but in London where is moist all the year, probably rendering the
painting like a world map due to melting or dampening of print color underneath after
one or two years, which is Okay for commercial low quality ones, since at the moment of
buying a painting at low rate, customers know that it corresponds to low quality and don’
t expect to hang it long on their wall, or may change it the next few days. However, for
family portrait or expensive and well selected ones, or the ones with very special
purposes or meanings, usually customers wish to reserve for longer time or even
generations.

Second, why customers bother to buy a hand-made painting from a gallery at high rate?
Because it contains high-valued skills that can be appreciated for good and certain spirit
that may convey to the buyer. If it is a print, why not go to a photo shop and print it out
at much lower pricing? And painters should also know, it is such hard efforts that are
worth such fuss to place order to China, inspect, take photos, email, pack, ship via
expensive express service, repack by gallery, and finally ship/hand to the customers.
While they want easy work by applying printing technology, they are somehow digging
tomb for their own painter’s career, by not keeping fostering their skill of painting and
eroding spirit of hard working.

Third, one day when such truth is uncovered to all end-customers, painters will face
tough situation at their middle age. There is no easy penny to earn in the world. We are
all born to work hard.

If we are caring for those excellent painters enough and counting on them to make more
nice works for us, then we have to educate them so that their career can live longer.

Written by
James Jianyin LIU
Sunshine Promising, Inc.
www.SunshinePromising.com
Your Best Arts Partner